Representative imagePune: Officials of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) have lodged a first information report (FIR) against city-based drug wholesaler, a medical store owner and a medical representative for allegedly illegally selling a cough syrup formulation containing narcotic drug codeine phosphate.Officials have also issued show-cause notices to the drug wholesaler and retailer for suspension of their licences.

Cough syrup containing codeine is not banned in Maharashtra, but there are stringent norms for its sale and purchase so that the drug cannot be abused. Codeine, known as the poor man’s morphine, is a highly popular drug among the youth as its consumption gives a high.

“We received a tip-off that cough syrup containing codeine phosphate was being sold illegally in Pune.

When we started investigating, we found that a drug wholesaler, medical store owner and medical representative were involved in the illegal sale for quick money. We filed an FIR against the erring individuals with the Vishrambaug police station on Friday for violations of various norms of the Drug and Cosmetics Act, 1940. We have also issued notices to the wholesaler and retailer for suspension of their licences,” said Suhas Mohite, assistant commissioner (drug), FDA, Pune. There are seven licensed wholesalers in Pune who supply cough syrup containing codeine phosphate to retail drug stores.

“We found that one of the wholesalers in Sadashiv Peth had been selling a sizable quantity of cough syrup Ascoril-C, which contains codeine phosphate. This made us suspicious. When we investigated the matter, we found that the wholesaler sold 360 bottles of the syrup on the same day to three medical stores, each receiving 120 bottles. When we approached these stores, we found that they had not received the consignment nor had they ordered the cough syrup from the wholesaler,” Mohite said.

When officials investigated the matter further, they found that the wholesaler had dispensed the drug consignment to a medical representative, who in turn sold the consignment to a medical store in Kondhwa. When questioned, the medical representative produced sale bills that had been tampe red, officials said.

The investigating FDA officials then grilled the medical store owner, who revealed that the attendant at his shop had purchased the consignment from the medical representative.

“However, the store owner could not show the purchase or sale bills for the consignment of 360 bottles.

That shows that the drug was sold illegally,” Mohite said.

Further investigation revealed that the wholesaler had also sold two consignments of 180 bottles each to the same medical store on August 20. “However, the medical store owner denied the purchase on that date.

This means that the wholesaler prepared a fake bill and sold the bottles illegally.

There was some other clandestine purchase and sale,” Mohite said.

In the last week of October, the state FDA officials busted a huge racket of codeine cough syrup being sold illegally in Maharashtra. FDA officials had reco vered 15,000 bottles of codeine that were illegally stored in a godown in Mira-Bhayandar and were meant to be sold in the black market.

Two persons from Thane were found violating the provisions of the Drugs and Cosmetics Act, 1940, and one of them have been arrested jointly by state FDA officials and Thane police.

“There is a strong doubt of a big network involved in this clandestine sale of codeine-containing cough syrups. All this clandestine activity is based on illegal purchases. The illegal stock is sold to drugcodeine phosphate addicts at a very high price,” said state FDA commissioner Harshadeep Kamble.

The FDA was able to bust that racket working on a tipoff that there was a group supplying cough syrups to schoolchildren.

A team of inspectors from the drug regulator’s intelligence unit had kept watch on the suspect, who was tricked into supplying a few bottles to FDA officials who posed as customers.

The suspect was later caught with eight boxes of leading cough syrup brands.

At the time, Kamble had said that the stock was likely to be sold in Mumbai and other regions of the country.

“As per the information we have gathered, the stock was meant to be supplied to northeastern states and West Bengal, where it could be sold at three times the price,” he said.

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